anything came into being, He had Him as a counselor, being His own mind and thought" (Autolycus
2.22.3).
His own Word internal within His own bowels,
in the same passage he made it clear that a part of God was not lost in this begetting or emitting: "not
Himself being emptied of the Word (ouj kenwqeiV" aujtoV" tou' Lovgou)."
for the purpose of carrying out the Father's will in the economy of creation. Thus, at the begetting of the
Word, he was the "helper" in creation (Autolycus 2.10.3); that is, all things were made through (diav)
and liturgy that reinforced distinct divine persons in almost "crude" terms. Furthermore, Rogers's thesis seems awkward and
unnecessary. It is perhaps best to see Theophilus as presenting the Christian concept of Father, Son, and Spirit in philosophical
terms that would both communicate and appeal to a Greek reader. Even if Rogers's qualified thesis is correct that Theophilus
presented the lovgo" and sofiva as impersonal agents for rhetorical purposes, it seems more likely to me that in his own mind these
represented the personal divine agents of Son and Spirit, and as we see in Ireaneus, his readers certainly understood them this way.
movno" h\n oJ qeoV" kaiV ejn aujtw'/ oJ Lovgo")."
Literature, 2d English ed. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979]). Unfortunately, given the analogy of splavgcnon ("inward
parts," "entrails"), the original meaning could very well be Theophilus's intention, but this seems unlikely. The word splavgcnon
may also have a figurative meaning as "heart" or the innermost part of a person's immaterial being. If this is the case, then
ejxereuvgomai could mean "utter" or "proclaim." I favor this understanding since the object of ejxereuvgomai is lovgo" and sofiva,
implying a more immaterial, intellectual illustration. Rogers's question, "are we dealing with an oral or vaginal delivery of God's
agent?" (Rogers, Theophilus of Antioch, 94), certainly presses the figure toward absurd extremes, even though his question is how
to take the metaphor. His decision to embrace a pregnancy metaphor would make sense if the object were the uiJov", but since it is
lovgo" in this passage, and since Theophilus qualified the image with an assertion that God maintained his own lovgo" in himself,
the metaphor of utterance makes the most sense. A possible source of this thought is found in Justin, Dial. 61.2, on the begetting of
the lovgo": "But, does not something similar happen also with us humans? When we utter a word, it can be said that we beget the
word, but not by cutting it off, in the sense that our power of uttering words would thereby be diminished." Grant misses this
parallel in his discussion of this passage, suggesting rather a dependence on contemporary Greek mythology (Robert M. Grant,
Jesus after the Gospels: The Christ of the Second Century, 1st ed. [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990], 72-74).
analysis of Theophilus's writings makes Rogers's thesis increasingly untenable (Rogers, Theophilus of Antioch, 93-103). His
explanation of this passage runs as follows: "When Theophilus says that the logos is always innate in the heart of God, this is to be
taken figuratively to mean the logos is constantly conversing with God" (Rogers, Theophilus of Antioch, 102). It seems more likely
that Theophilus is rather addressing the same tension as Justin's analogy of the enkindled flame in Dial. 61.2. Following his analogy
of the spoken word, Justin wrote, "We can observe a similar example in nature when one fire kindles another without losing
anything, but remaining the same; yet the enkindled fire seems to exist of itself and to shine without lessening the brilliancy of the
first fire." Therefore, Theophilus most likely presented the lovgo" as a dependent hypostasis who is distinct in number, not merely a
contingent extension of God's being or attributes.